Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday June 13, 2015 @07:10PM
from the on-the-horizon dept.

FreedomFirstThenPeac writes: Apparently Orange County (specifically, Seal Beach area) has found that drones are useful for finding hazards at the beach, the story has a nice drone-shot overhead of a small shark (scale is hard to tell). They also report that it is easy to spot rip tides. The question of the day, how long till someone links imaging processing software with the guidance system so they can get the drones to hover over, and follow along, as sharks patrol off shore? Just another day at the beach, see the shoal of nerds schooling along with their drone controls? They are the ones who are missing all the swimsuit-enhanced normals in the area.

Although shark-spotting may be a novel use of UAV's (technically, not drones), there are perhaps thousands of as yet unexploited uses for these little technological wonders.

This is great news for the proponents of more widespread FAA approval of the UAV's commercial applications, because for all their potential helpfulness, there is any number of illegal and ill-advised uses that opponents will rail against.

If they could become ubiquitous protectors of human safety, it is more likely the occasional male

And since when is "Apparently..." good enough justification for an article?
Also, these are not drones as they are not autonomous
Also, a real drone will cost a lot more than $1400
Also, a real drone that has the same range as a shark will never be cost effective
Also, fuck slashdot...

Not just sharks but everyone in law enforcement out on patrol should be recording their activities so that confrontations with citizens can be reviewed objectively and perhaps avoided altogether. Just because they carry frickin' lasers instead of guns should not make a difference.

The sharks really should have body cams but this is the next best thing.

"Some have worried drones could be used to leer at unsuspecting beachgoers or to see inside the homes lining the shore.

The wide angle lenses on the majority of prosumer/consumer devices make concerns over privacy ridiculous. And finally it's not a drone unless it's flying autonomously. Here it's a quadcopter with FPV video.

Australia already uses drones for shark spotting... While it's not automated yet, they are already working towards that. They are in the process of collecting sample images of sharks in the water for a AI to use for comparison.

Just buy new ones when they go wonky. DJI Phantoms are about a kilobuck. If they last 2 weeks, that's only 25k/year, which isn't much compared to the salary of the lifeguard looking at the controller. And I'll bet if you committed to buy 25 of them a year, you'd get them cheaper.

Except that's just one beach, one area covered by a drone - lifeguards save a LOT of people; how many people get bitten by sharks? It's like investing in something to keep you from getting struck my lightening. Australia and parts of Africa might have real shark problems, the U.S. doesn't.

I grew up just South of Seal Beach. Talking to a CG chopper pilot who routinely flew up and down our coast once and he said that if you guys (surfers) could see what I see every day from the air you would never go in the water. Apparently there are quite a few largish sharks out there. Was news to me.

It's just proof that you don't need this surveillance... shark attacks on people, especially in the U.S., are so rare that pursuing this technology is like pursuing anti-lightening hat technology... it's pointless. It's one of those things where people's perceptions are skewed because of movies like Jaws and "Shark Week" on discovery.... every once in a while someone gets bit, usually non-lethally, and it's incredibly rare, but makes a great news story. It's another case of "wrap us all in bubble wrap so

Low risk doesn't mean we ignore it altogether. One of the reasons lightning is less risky is because we can forecast it's presence and take reasonable steps to avoid it for very little effort. Similarly, Sharks attacks are rare, but reducing the risk of a serious injury or death for the cost of a few thousand dollars would seem like a no-brainer. We don't need million dollar Predator drones, but a handful of RC quadcopters with cameras at the most popular beaches sounds reasonable to me.

Already posted or I'd mod you up. 75 attacks, mostly non-lethal; there are places in Australia and South Africa where they could really use something like this (as they are already spending a lot of money on it); it's a pointless waste applied to U.S. beaches. But hey, shark attacks are great news stories, and with a couple of generations tainted by Jaws and similar movies, it's all about the emotional factor.

The question of the day, how long till someone links imaging processing software with the guidance system so they can get the drones to hover over, and follow along, as sharks patrol off shore?

And the question of the day before - or at least, the question of the feasibility phase of the programme - is : is swimming at shallow depth a sufficiently common pre-hunting behaviour amongst all types of dangerous sharks in this particular area, that the behaviour is a sufficiently good predictor of attack to be wor